Book publication by Professor Toft and Sidita Kushi – Dying by the Sword: The Devolution of U.S. Foreign Policy.

Accolades: Best book of the year, Foreign Affairs; Shortlisted for the Arthur Ross Prize, Council on Foreign Relations

Through a historical and data-driven review of the U.S.’s dominant foreign policy trends from 1776 until today, America the Bully contends that the U.S. seems to have recently become addicted to military intervention. Lacking clear national strategic goals unlike in the past, the U.S. now pursues a security whack-a-mole policy, more reactionary than deliberate. America the Bully dedicates a chapter to each defining era of U.S. foreign policy, introducing historical narratives, case study examples, and compelling patterns from the Military Intervention Project (MIP) along the way. Every chapter highlights how the U.S. used and balanced primary tools of statecraft – diplomacy, trade, and war – to achieve its objectives. It showcases, however, that in recent decades, the U.S. has heavily favored war over the other pillars of statecraft. The book concludes with a warning that if the U.S. does not stem the growing trends of kinetic diplomacy, it may do permanent damage to its diplomatic corps, dooming it too costly and often useless wars of choice. It may be doomed to the path of reactionary aggression, increasing its military footprint internationally to the detriment of its diplomatic and economic influence. If this trend continues, it will spell disaster for the U.S.’s image, credibility, and, ultimately, its international and domestic stability.

Ultimately, this book aims to be a concise synthesis of the entire arc of the U.S.’s intervention history, as well as an empirical analysis of the main trends in the unique dataset we are developing (i.e., a comprehensive dataset and case narratives on all U.S. military interventions). As we trace every instance of U.S. military intervention and speak to changing U.S. strategies – comparing military, economic, and diplomacy tools and then gauging outcomes – we also learn more about what the future demands. Our analysis shows that the U.S. does not need to restrain itself from engaging on the world stage fully; it must merely rely on a more extensive array of tools to maneuver successfully.